02:30pm
Thu Feb19, 2004 |
Although
I've never really roamed the virtual isles of eBay,
I'm aware that you can sell most anything there.
Last night the president of Exahost
Inc. contacted me through Microsoft Messenger;
Peter and I go way back and get along great mainly
because he understands my bent mind and appreciates
my off-wall sense of humour. The chat started as
it usually does, with him asking a quick question,
us getting into a brief conversation then him being
abruptly pulled away with a phone call from a client
(...he's now on the west coast, so I'm drinking
a Beer and he's working...) So there I sit staring
at "BRB: Phone" -- I call this state Messenger
Purgatory, sort of like being on hold except I know
Peter's watching his screen while assisting his
customer, so like I've done so often in the past,
I start chatting with myself. Moments pass before
Peter 'returns' to the conversation chewing me out
that he had to keep putting his customer on hold
because he was laughing so hard. I told him he better
save the conversation, it'll be worth millions on
the world market. It didn't take him long at all...
Look
what we found on eBay. ...pull my finger.
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02:22pm
Wed Feb18, 2004 |
Some
ask what the point of pre-ordering a soon to be
released game would actually be... it's not as if
they're only going to make 5,000 copies then you're
screwed, they will print more; so why bother rushing
to purchased something that just proves you're going
to purchase something later? Perks! Here is a classic
example of a pre-order deal that I think's great;
EA Games fantastic Battlefield series has new and
greatly anticipated continuation coming out soon,
just take
a look at this action from Battlefield
Vietnam and if you pre-order you get this spanky
CD of the official soundtrack. This CD has 11 tracks
by the original artists that held top chart during
the period; this is a great music CD worthy of purchase
on its own, nice bonus EA.
As it turns out, BTM43 will be after the birthing
episode... You don't want our Treasurer, Isis collecting
from you in her condition. No really; you don't.
We're probably going to be looking at the first
week or so in May -- We'll finalize the date and
post it here soon!
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10:45am
Mon Feb16, 2004 |
Now
this really pisses me off... Firstly, Canadians
still tend to get a little excited whenever there's
even a reference to Canada on television in the
States (...mostly because we're still not sure if
Americans even know we're here...) so to have Conan
right here in Toronto for a week was a big deal
for the city as far as exposure goes; we're still
trying to convince everyone else that we're not
walking the streets wearing surgical masks... I've
taped all the episodes directly to DVD and had the
intension of editing them into a nice four chapter,
commercial free DVD; I guess I should have taped
the first air date for each show and not relied
on the rebroadcast. It would seem the Canadian Government
took Triumph
the insult comic dog's bit on the French to heart
and slaughtered the spot before the show repeated
(...and before I caught the bit...) I have a real
issue with censorship, I guess that's the appeal
of the internet, I can say whatever the hell I want
and there's little you can do about it other than
threaten to throw poop at me -- I personally think
Triumph
is a riot, just check out the bashing he gives Hawaii
when he does an impromptu
weather report as a guest spot. Now because
'someone else' decided on my behalf that I'm not
mature enough, or that my morals aren't strong enough
to handle his humour I'll not get to see the spot
that pissed everyone off... Bite me.
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11:15am
Fri Feb13, 2004 |
Happy
Friday the thirteenth everyone! Seems we've figured
out why the media is promoting Conan
on the news so much, we think it's to overshadow
the big scam that hit our new Prime Minister this
week; Auditor General Shelia Fraser found at least
$100 million in public funds was funnelled to Liberal
supporters for a federalist ad campaign in Quebec,
and that most of the work was never done. "I am
sick and deeply, deeply troubled about what happened,"
Martin began, before addressing his own involvement.
He notes that the program began in 1997, but that
questions began to be raised about it in the year
2002; that's when the Auditor General first identified
irregularities. "That is when I began to understand
that what had occurred went far beyond administrative
failures and involved possible criminal conduct,"
the P.M. insists. "But even then no one understood
the full scope of what was involved until the Auditor
General's Report came out recently "Some can't understand
how as a Quebec minister I could not have known
about the conduct of this program. Well, the fact
is that very few ministers did." -- perhaps that
should read, most ministers don't have a clue.
Have you nailed the new demo of UnReal Tournament
2004 yet? The official
site for the demo claims there's so many people
hammering on their servers and mirrors that many
are having an issue getting the game demo (...Oh!
What's that on the SuperFTP the day it was released;
sitting right there in the "All things UnReal"
folder?..) I have yet to actually check the game
out myself, but we're getting some very positive
feedback about it already! Grab it and give it a
shot.
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02:00pm
Wed Feb11, 2004 |
Look
who's the talk of Toronto right now... The big T.O.
has rolled out the red carpet for America's late
night King, Conan
O'Brien. The Canadian Adventure kicked of his
1,854th show in his tenth season. Canadian funny-man
and local resident Mike Myers joined the first show
to add some 'shaawing!'; tonight's guest is Michael
J. Fox, Ken Capling and Nickelback -- To show our
appreciation, the Canadians will be sending the
Americans Mike
Bullard; please feed him twice a day and give
him an open area to run around, he likes cheese.
(...if you didn't tape it and couldn't last till
12:30am to watch it, this morning's show will be
re-run at 10:00pm on Star!... If you couldn't even
give a crap, please disregard the entire upper paragraph,
and pay no mind to the image either... It'll fade
to the bottom of the minutes in time...)
Seems
Isis has begun 'nesting' now, the third floor of
the Abattoir is quickly starting to look like a
birthing center... As such, it seems unlikely at
this time there will be a scheduled BTM till after
the birth of (...as yet unnamed...) MiniMeat. You
all have the option however, of bombarding her email
with pleas and promises that you'll be good if we
can have another BTM before April; just tell her
you can't wait that long. (...don't tell her I told
you to say that though...).
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07:00pm
Mon Feb09, 2004 |
Time
to give a shout out to the CBC,
or more appropriately Rick Mercer. There’s
arguably a quantity of talent at the CBC, I've been
to tapings of The
Red Green Show, Kids in the Hall several times
and Royal Canadian
Air Farce (...where I bid over $200.00 on an
autographed tee shirt live with the cast *lowers
morphine drip* and loved every minute of it...)
– these are/were all Canadian shows that are
well worth the watch, but there's something new
out there I was excited to hear about, and his fourth
show is tonight at 8:00pm; Rick
Mercer's Monday Reports. For you American types,
this would be Rick's own version and formula of
you're the
Daily Show with Jon Stewart (…not that
I'm comparing them, but it would come as close a
match that I can think of…) If you don't know
what to watch tonight, take a watch; he's made me
look forward to Mondays, and has let the world know
why they should move to Ontario!.
(..oh, and Canada's going to get it's own chunk
of paradise as we add another "province"
to Canada, eh?..)
There's
rumour the next BTM might be after the birth of
MiniMeat (…still as yet to be named, and I
was the one who gave that guy the idea to call his
Son v2.0…) We'll keep you posted here of course.
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02:45pm
Mon Feb 03, 2004 |
Oh
yeah! We’re back with a new look, but it’s
kinda’ broken at the moment, so please bare
with us while we beat the Abattoir into shape…
Understand that the ‘grand change-over’
isn’t happening so like we said below, the
site’s migration to the new format will
be done in a rapid series of bit-by-bit movements
barely visible to the human eye, yet effective
enough to make it look like we’re still
working around here. Due to SARS, the Abattoir
had to lay-off over 80% of its web development
team, 50% of the graphics guru’s had to
go and we canned the entire R&D team; thus,
you will find broken links and busted images until
the remaining Abattoir staff can nail it all down.
We hope the new layout (…complete with the
‘spanky new navigation’…) will
be a little easier and more direct to get around
in.
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02:45pm
Mon Feb 03, 2004 |
Opportunity
is knocking on Mars door, perhaps the Spirit Rover
will answer… It’s been a couple weeks
now since the rover fell silent after testing
a motor in Spirit's Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer
(Mini-TES). The motor drives the elevation mirror
within the Panoramic Mast Assembly (…a long
tube-shaped structure at the front of the rover…)
Experiments were being done on Mars to compare
temperature ranges and electrical currents needed
to drive the mirror motor with those measured
pre-launch in a vacuum chamber at JPL. These tests
were in process when Spirit seems to have started
to experience problems. Best they can tell, a
situation has occurred which causes Sprit’s
brain to reboot the rover. The processor comes
online, loads up the software, then in a short
time it reboots itself in what the scientists
are calling a Safe Mode; Gee, my stupid computer
does that all the time, it’s called Microsoft
Windows. As it stands now, they're giving the
flash RAM on Spirit a good flashing, they hope
the format will fix the issue. Early January 25,
at about 12:05 a.m. EST, NASA's second Mars Exploration
Rover -- Opportunity -- arrived on Mars. It's
region of research is an area known as Meridiani
Planum, halfway around the planet from where its
sister robot, the Spirit rover now wrestles with
consciousness… In other space related, robotic,
scientific news -- The European Mars Express orbiter
has confirmed the existence of water ice in the
south polar cap of Mars! The craft also beamed
back a detailed photo of a channel on the red
planet that might have long ago been created by
flowing water. Scientists have long known that
Mars' north polar cap is composed mostly of water
ice. Previous observations by NASA's Mars Global
Surveyor (MGS) had experts convinced the south
polar cap contained water ice, too. In fact there
appears to be a vast store of frozen water mostly
buried under a blanket of carbon dioxide ice,
commonly called dry ice. Some of the dry ice melts
away during summer in the southern hemisphere
of Mars, exposing sheets of water ice below --
that's what MGS had found photographic evidence
for. Sounds like a great place to set up camp…
Book my flight. If you step back and take a look
at all this, it’s really rather incredible…
We’ve picked a 5 mile long by 1 mile wide
“target” area to land Opportunity
and the folks at JPL did just that; in effect,
they’ve blown a spit-ball over 50 million
miles and scored a direct hit… Well done.
(more)
In
Abattoir.Net related news, BTM42 saw the return
of the “Wall of Quake v2004”, a big
thanks to Al at AVDeals
for the BoxLight
Studio Cinema 20HD theatre head; with 2200
lumens and a 900:1 contrast ratio, this high definition
unit has been dubbed “the flame thrower”
for good reason. Couple that with a Da-Lite
Permwall screen that assembles in seconds
and you’ve got yourself over 4,784sq/inches
of visual “Hello!!” We’ll have
a permanent setup with a pull-down Sharpvision
Screen set-up soon… Contact us if you’re
interested in having your company logo burned
into the retinas of the most advanced gamers in
the world at the next BTM; our sponsorship rates
are very competitive. If you would like to build
your own "Wall of Quake", click over
to AVDeals
for the best pricing on plasmas and more, and
we're not just saying that because they lent us
this one!
Many emails coming in asking how Isis
is doing with the pregnancy; she’s in great
shape and the shape she’s chosen is a circle.
MiniMeat is getting to the point now where he’s
starting to kick quite a bit; he was seen for
the first time doing a flip – it was kind
of like watching “Aliens” all over
again. The new room on the Abattoir’s third
floor is almost done, just a little trim to finish
then the carpet goes in, then the baby goes in.
Anyone know of a good name for a strapping young
lad? I’ve yet to think of one that I like,
send us your suggestions!
What a nice sporting event over the weekend too…
It was nice to see Janet Jackson’s breast
in high definition; all I can say about that is
this, that was no “wardrobe failure”
nor was it an accident – is that what we
have to look forward to with each and every major
telecast in the future, everyone trying to one-up
the last celebrity kiss, the last celebrity breast,
the last celebrity whatever!? …I hope so.
Just
a quick FYI here, I’ve been working on Abattoir.Net
V4 for the last while, the idea was to premier
the new site layout on new years, but as you can
tell, that’s not happened, nor will it for
a while but we might start ‘trickling’
in pages soon rather than attempt a total re-vamp
of the entire site (…GasP! Notepad’s
gunna’ be busy!..) so don’t be too
shocked if you notice a few changes around here
in the weeks to come. (…Gee, a LAN Minutes
Update! There’s a change!..) We’re
also still in limbo over BTM43’s date, we’ll
let it out soon -- obviously, much of the planning
for BTM43 will depend on the girth and desires
of Isis.
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MeatMan
Says:
"If you're new to Abattoir.Net and want to get to know what
we're all about, sit back with a cup of joe or a brew and cruise
through the ramblings of the past"
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